THREE MILES FOR STRINGY MEAT Mirella (called Lela), the younger WIves. These women's husbands never ad- dressed them by their names, or called them "wife" (romni), or used any term of endearment; nor were they called "mother" (dai) by their children. Every- one referred to them as the boria, and, indeed, it was Jeta to whom they were answerable, not their menfolk. The boria got up before everyone else, including the khaxni, the hens. They moved silently about, collecting wood from a tidy pile that they main- tained along one inner wall of the court- yard. In the sooty light they built a neat fire, always the same, neither too high nor too feeble. While the wa- ter heated up, the girls gath- ered any vaguely soiled blan- kets, rugs, and clothes for washing. Each had her own work station in a different cor- ner of the courtyard and there she set up a long tIn tub on an old wooden crate. They poured in boil- ing water and swirled it around, begin- ning the real ritual: hours of trance- like, rhythmic rubbing, interrupted by a stream of demands-a hungry child, an insufficiendy caffeinated father-in -law. Everywhere in the Balkans, life felt unstable. But among the Dukas one felt as they did: utterly safe, in a family. Kinostudio itself was a family-practi- cally the whole neighborhood was re- lated. There was no intermarriage be- tween Albanians and Gypsies in Kino- studio, but, far from suggesting a de- moralized culture, endogamy here seemed the mark of a buoyandy confident group, settled in their skin and not needing outsiders. Within a day, everyone knew that I was there and that I was with the Dukas I was chaperoned everywhere. At first, I tried occasionally to slip out for a solitary stroll. No dice. Within minutes, Nicu, Nuzi, Artani, or a set of boria would appear at my side. Even at home, I was never allowed to be alone-not ever. The Dukas did not share the gadje notions of or need for privacy. Or for quiet. "The more and the noisier the better" was their creed-one that I found to be universal among Roma. Their concept of a lone person was a Rom who for some infraction had been banished from the group. There was something wrong with you, some shame, if you had to be alone. Privacy of a kind was claimed in the way that all the Duka women might, as if by previ- ous arrangement, just ignore all the Duka men for a period-and vice versa. Similarly, no one spoke to a man in the morning before he had washed his face. Privacy came in the form of imaginary walls. These walls didn't do it for me, though. I became intransigendy consti- pated, and remained that way for a month of increasing congestion and alann T HOUGH there were no shortages in Albania during my visit, food- or, rather, meat-seemed to be the only subject of discussion, and the procuring and preparing of it busied three-quarters of the household for most of each day. Just opposite the house, there was Mish Mas, or Meat Meat, the butcher's. (Mish is "meat" in Albanian; mas is "meat" in Romani.) But Jeta didn't shop there. The proprietor of Mish Mas would jokingly beckon to her, and she would shout back, "Ka xlia ma pe tute!" ("I am going to shit on you!") Wearing her most unforgiving grimace, she pro- nounced Mish Mas meat bilacho, no good, and so every day, cursing the lo- cal butcher, she would exchange her slippers for her "city shoes," the shiny black ones with heels, and walk three miles down to the covered market in town. There you could sniff and pinch the meat, and you could really haggle. Jeta knew how to haggle. Her method involved disgusted jab- bing of various cuts of meat spread over bloodied white tiles. Each poke was fol- lowed by a hoot or a cluck or merely a disappointed sigh Such scrutiny of the meat seemed poindess, because, at least to my untrained eye, it was all the same. It was certainly all sheep parts: brains, balls, guts, gut linings, organs and glands, whole skinned heads, and spin- dly joints. Greasy, stringy ewe or ram- that was the only mas you could get, and we got it every day. All over Central and Eastern Europe, people had recent memories and occa- sional reminders of severe shortages. The daily meal at the house of an Al- banian family I came to know was mea- gre: bean soup, perhaps, with a piece of fat floating in each bowl for calories- perfectly adequate but in J eta's eyes derisory. Still, she didn't shop for the fu- ture; she trusted in her ability to scour 89 :.: :." :.: .': "'. :." "'. .:. ...........::.::.:.:. ..":. .:. 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